Elitest vs. Out of Touch

Last Saturday when LOLGOP and I attended the Americans for Prosperity forum in Troy, Michigan (liveblog HERE), GOP Presidential contender Rick Santorum spit upon the goal of giving every American boy and girl the chance to go to college. What’s more, instead of valuing a college education, he described it as “indoctrination” and President Obama trying to “reshape [students] in his own image.”

I’m not joking.

Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands. Some people have incredible gifts to use and want to work out there making things.President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college.

What a snob.[laughter, applause]

There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor and trying to indoctrinate them.

Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.

Now, this was a tea party crowd so pissing on education and those who have and/or value education is a red meat dog whistle on par with disparaging “the lamestream media”, Rachel Maddow, and Michael Moore. But for a front-running candidate to be so sneering about hoping kids get a college education is truly astonishing.

In this day and age, getting a job that pays enough to support a family requires a college education in nearly every instance. This isn’t a liberal lie. This is a fact. These aren’t the days of good union jobs where you could have a blue collar job in an automotive factory and make enough to buy a house, have some kids and put a little away for vacations and retirement.

Republicans like Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney have been largely responsible for putting an end to that, in fact.

Could it possibly be that Rick Santorum actually wants to lower the average intelligence of Americans? Could it be that he sees this as something to value; a solid step forward to an Idiocracy?

This wasn’t an accident. Yesteday he doubled down on it on the Sunday morning political show This Weekend With George Stephanopoulos.

“I think because there are lot of people in this country that have no desire or no aspiration to go to college, because they have a different set of skills and desires and dreams that don’t include college,” Santorum said. “And to sort of lay out there that somehow this should be everybody’s goal, I think, devalues the tremendous work that people who, frankly, don’t go to college and don’t want to go to college because they have a lot of other talents and skills that, frankly, college, you know, four-year colleges may not be able to assist them.”

This really displays just how remarkably out of touch Santorum is. Just as out of touch as Romney, in my opinion. If there are “a lot of people in this country that have no desire or no aspiration to go to college”, it’s far more likely because we haven’t prepared them well at the K-12 level and, most importantly, because college is an expense they simply cannot afford. But to suggest that we shouldn’t offer that opportunity to every kid that wants to go to college is offensive and un-American.

To suggest that it’s a desire by President Obama to indoctrinate people is even worse. It’s a sad statement about how bad things have gotten in terms of education in this country that people actually believe that. I honestly never thought I’d live in a time when people were looked down on for getting a college degree. It goes hand in hand with the demonization of our school teachers.

This is, at its base, a stated desire by a presidential candidate to make sure we always have an uneducated, or at least under-educated, underclass to do the menial, low paying jobs nobody else wants. It’s also a broad admission that Rick Santorum doesn’t know what it means to be a young person growing up in America today with hopes of having a life at least as good, if not better, than their parents.

Those hopes will never be realized in our country today by people without higher education. That is not indoctrination or snobby or elitist.

Author: EclectablogChris Savage is the owner and publisher of Eclectablog, your one-stop shop for progressive state & national political news & commentary.

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Mitchell Robinson is associate professor and chair of music education at Michigan State University. His research is focused on music education and education policy. Follow him on Facebook HERE and Twitter at @mrobmsu. His own blog is at MitchellRobinson.net.

Susan J. Demas is a Democratic strategist, serving as vice president at Farough & Associates. She is a 17-year veteran of journalism and a syndicated political columnist for 12 years. She was most recently the editor and publisher of Inside Michigan Politics. Follow her on Twitter @sjdemas.

Tawana “Honeycomb” Petty is a mother, social justice organizer, youth advocate, poet and author. She was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and is intricately involved in water rights, digital justice and visionary organizing work in Detroit. You can learn more about Tawana "Honeycomb" Petty by visiting honeycombthepoet.com. Follow her on Twitter at @CombsThePoet.

Ammara Ansari is a Masters in Public Policy student at University of Michigan. She is a board member of the Canton Democratic Club and Finance Director for Megan Cavanagh for Supreme Court. Find her on twitter at @AmmaraAnsari16